27 July 2014 3:35 PM

A Radio Interview with PH on Ukraine Crisis

I gave this interview to Fubar Radio on Saturday. It gives me a largely-uninterrupted opportunity to explain my position on the Ukraine crisis. I suppose I'll just have to put up with their inability to spell my name.

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Paul P writes,

"Then don't. It occurs to me that this is all you ever say anyway"

Yes, because your posts on this topic are always full of fallacies.

Obviously, the idea that it is has been proven that evolution - whatever the success of evolutionary theory in some areas of biology - can account for all that goes into human experience or nature is at best highly contentious and in need of proof, at worst it is just false. Anyway, whatever happens, let us see some evidence and argument and not just unsupported assertions.

As evolution is a process, most of the explanatory power is in what undergoes the process. That is, for a materialist like yourself it is matter and not evolution that does most to explain man. Of course, this puts into sharp focus your question begging, as you are just asserting materialism without proof, again.

Well, you have to remember, for better or worse, those in the past often had stronger ideas about the need for social and cultural unity than we do. This is one reason heretics were punished - because it was assumed that not doing so would cause social disharmony and disruption.

We have gone almost completely the other way now and see in any attempts at unity a danger.

"Ah, another post full of fallacies and showing why it is just not worth discussing these topics with you."

Then don't. It occurs to me that this is all you ever say anyway.

"That you think you can just assert that evolution - by which you mean an entirely naturalistic process - can account for all we are and all we experience or know, including morality, without any support or justification seems ample demonstration of the massive flaws that your posts on religion and science are replete with."

I think I said that this was my justified premise, justified by 150 years of observation and measurement, the creation in the interim of the sciences of microbiology and genetics, both of which completely vindicate the theory of evolution. I think I am entitled to that premise and deduce therefrom.

"For a start evolution is a process. On its own it explains nothing. It would be like trying to explain something entirely by its structure or relations."

What an absurd statement. The only thing missing from the evolutionary picture is the exact chemistry of the initiation. Pretty much everything else, with discussion on selection criteria and speciation ongoing, is understood. The field opening up now is evolutionary psychology, a field within neuroscience which looks to have promising leads in explaining the scientific foundation of morality.

I assure you that I have no desire to interfere with the rights of "young earthers" to maintain their belief. However, if "young earthers", "flat earthers" or geocentrists were in positions of power and sought to limit, or prevent the rights of expression of those who opposed their views, I would object most strongly, and that is the type of censorship, backed by threats and punishment, which is under discussion here.

I'm reliably informed that grey areas often appear prior to baldness. Perhaps we can at least agree on that.
You have still not explained how you know what internet users think. Other, of course, than your rather bland reference to 'general knowledge'.

And why are you responding to this lengthy 'baiting' when you advise others to ignore such posts? This appears, to me - and, perhaps, to others - to rather weaken your case.

Ah, another post full of fallacies and showing why it is just not worth discussing these topics with you. That you think you can just assert that evolution - by which you mean an entirely naturalistic process - can account for all we are and all we experience or know, including morality, without any support or justification seems ample demonstration of the massive flaws that your posts on religion and science are replete with.

For a start evolution is a process. On its own it explains nothing. It would be like trying to explain something entirely by its structure or relations.

I do agree in principle agree that the domain of natural science should be separate from that of religion in terms of pure knowledge and inquiry.

However, one could argue that multiple layers of truth that may inhere in a narrative or an image, including the medieval cosmology. C.S Lewis called this cosmology the Discarded Image and wrote movingly about it. The allegorical, moral, and symbolic meaning of a narrative or image may far outweigh its literal truth. And remember that cosmology did capture important aspects of human experience.

I think that the time of the Discarded Image was over. But I can understand the desire to hold on to it. Most young earth creationists tend to have a rather dubious kind of Christianity, as far as I can. But if some sincere traditional Christians were to hold to a worldview where they saw the world as created in six days, then I see no pressing need to overturn that just to teach them about the literal scientific truth. I suppose, though, a lot will depend upon one's philosophical and spiritual beliefs.

When I wrote my last reply, I had read your post of 10.08pm, but not the one of 09.08pm.

Regarding the latter, you say that science is "simply a method for acquiring knowledge in the workings of the universe". Precisely. The science itself, the investigation of physical phenomena, is an objective exercise used to obtain knowledge, a physical, not a metaphysical exercise.

Accordingly, it should be left to those with the skill and knowledge to undertake it and not be subjected to limitations of expression because of the metaphysical dogmas of the religious. How such knowledge is used, of course, is a different matter: to give an all too obvious example nuclear energy. However, there is no moral dimension to the question of heliocentrism or geocentrism. They are either right or wrong and, as it turns out, the former is right and the latter is wrong. Heliocentrism cannot be used for good or ill as nuclear energy can.

I ask again, even if Galileo had agreed not to support heliocentrism, what right did Pope Paul V or Pope Urban VIII have to dictate to Galileo what views he should hold or publish on a purely scientific matter?

As for your assertion that Galileo was not tortured, only threatened with torture, well kudos to the Catholic Church. I only said that he was threatened. The threat was sufficient as Galileo decided that, on the whole, he would prefer not to be tortured, but was that not a shameful abuse of power?

Galileo was charged because for expressing his views. There is simply no way for you to get around this. Why should he not have done so? I ask again: what right did either Pope (initially Paul V, later Urban VIIII) have to prevent him from doing so?

Why should he have been forced to give equal weight to both theories, when he believed in one and not in the other? The very fact that you do not question the probity of the Church in punishing a man for publishing a theory, which for all your questioning, is palpably true, simply shows the extent to which your own mind has lost any independence it might have had and is in thrall to the institution whose dogma you are so willing to accept.

It is a little like arguing with a Communist from the 1960s: the party can do no wrong and must be defended whatever the evidence against it and however weak the defence: the mindset is precisely the same. It makes debate pointless and futile.

That is a bit like saying that because there is no definite amount of hairs which marks the boundary between being bald and not being bald, no one is bald. Yes, there are grey areas, but that does not mean that trolling is simply in the eye of the beholder or not rightfully loathed.

Mike B: One more thing: scepticism about the definitive truth of the Copernican theory has never been quite as marginal as you suggest. The great astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle said (I'm quoting from memory): It's not possible to say that one theory (the Copernican) is true and the other (the Ptolemaic) is false.

Mike B: I've dealt with the points you made already, but here goes again. In the popular legend of Galileo he was violently persecuted by the pope and the Church - the pope in question being Pope Urban VIII.

Galileo was charged because he broke a pledge not to explicitly promote heliocentrism - in that sense he broke his contract with his publisher, and used the book he had been commissioned to write to lampoon him as well. A modern analogy would be if a publisher commissioned someone to write a book about the theory of man-made climate change with specific instructions not to come down explicitly on one side of the controversy or the other, and the author promised to obey part of his contract, but proceeded to disregard it, by writing a pro (or anti) climate change tract. Obviously the charge against Galileo related to the specific offence (explicitly advocating helio-centrism). How could it not do so? I ask once again: if Pope Urban had sought to silence Galileo, why would he have invited him, not only to write on the subject, but to give both sides of the story? It's a lot more than modern advocates of, say, man made climate change give their opponents.

I'm old enough to remember the immense hype for several years about the dangers of the millennium bug, and how sceptics of that particular (by definition unproven) theory were treated as professional contrarians. Unfortunately I'm also old enough to remember the immense hysteria over the AIDS virus in the mid to late 1980s and the insistence of the political, medical, and media establishments that all sectors of society were at serious risk of contacting the virus. Again those who pooh-poohed this absurdly alarmist notion were castigated as dangerously complacent. The point being that scientific consensus in and of itself proves precisely nothing, and is often subject to very rapid change.

Galileo may have been threatened with torture but no torture was inflicted - unlike in the case of the inmates of Western detention camps, many of whom have never been charged, much less convicted of any offense. If western liberals worried more about these violations and less about the injustices, real and imagined, meted out to historical martyrs in the cause of scientism, we might have a pleasanter world . But then that's the whole point of the Galileo legend - it's about defaming the past to exalt the present.

".....whereas religion deals with - first and foremost - the metaphysical."

I think you mean the fantastical, but never mind.

"Besides, religion includes a large normative concern with moral and spiritual behaviour, which is not paralleled by anything in natural science. This is why religion is more dogmatic than science, and legitimately so."

The question of normative moral behaviour (I have no idea what spiritual behaviour means) is a field of study in neuroscience and evolutionary psychology. Can science say what we *ought* to do rather than just describing what we actually do and attempting to explain it? Some people think it can, and this is an interesting development in the field.

My premise in this circumstance, well justified by observation of the natural world, is that evolution by natural selection accounts for everything we associate with the human condition - body biology obviously, but also the emergent properties of our large and sophisticated brains, notably that which we call consciousness and all that issues therefrom.

Forgive me if you have heard this a billion times and that it resides more properly in the bowels of philosophic contempt rather that soaring in the thin atmospheres of the metaphysical stratosphere, but following someone down the street and observing a slate tumble from the roof and about to strike that person, your instinct without giving it a moment's thought is to call out and warn them. This is not taught by religion or any other course in philosophic normative-ism. It is pure instinct, a pure altruistic instinct.

One could go on with examples of this kind. Seeing a child struggling in the water your instinct without a millisecond's hesitation is to help the child and urgently seek some way of rescue. Again this is not taught by religious metaphysics or philosophy degree-taking. It is an altruistic instinct.

Can this instinctive behaviour in any way be construed as an evolutionary instruction, as it were, as to what we *ought* to do? Is this instruction telling us, planted in our DNA in some sense, that we *ought* to warn the person in front, that we *ought* to rescue the child? Is an a priori 'ought-ness' a given considering that the behaviour is instinctive, i.e. not of our own devising?

I don't need a long dissertation from Aquinas or Anselm or Aristotle, and granted that you and Mr Wooderson are already laughing hysterically, would you nevertheless in terms understood by the pygmy-brained members of the IQ D-list tell me if this line of research is not at least worth a look. Thanks.

Mike B: I am a Catholic but that doesn't dictate my views on the Galileo business. I believe popes have made many disastrous temporal decisions over the centuries - supporting William of Orange's invasion of Britain and Ireland to name just one of many. I'm not a Muslim but that doesn't stop me disbelieving political and media hysteria about the threat of Islamic terrorism. By the same token, the pro-Kiev forces in Ukraine are in many cases nominally Catholic, but that doesn't stop me believing that many of them are thugs or useful idiots, or both. I question the popular Galileo legend, not because the baddie in it is the pope, but because it is at odds with the historical facts.

What business of the pope's was it to intrude in scientific matters? That depends on your view of the pope - and of science. A previous pontiff of an earlier century condemned the invention of the crossbow, predicting correctly that it would lead to much wanton slaughter. I've never quite understood the modern view that scientific freedom trumps all other values. Science is simply a method for acquiring knowledge of the workings of the universe and that knowledge can be used for good or ill. There are countless historical examples of scientific knowledge being used for ill. If a terrorist group conducts chemical experiments in order to perfect a powerful explosive device they are in one sense engaging in scientific inquiry. However I presume no sane person would suggest that preventing them from doing so would be an unjust infringement of their scientific freedom. Scientific freedom must always have limits; the only questions are where such limits should be drawn and who should get to draw them. Being a Catholic I naturally believe the pope has more legitimate authority in this regard than say Baroness Warnock or Tony Blair.

Posted by: Colm J | 02 August 2014 at 03:51 PM:
"As for your absurd claim that cancer rates have only risen in line with population growth: not true. According to the BBC website proportional rates have doubled in recent times - (and many would view that as a very conservative estimate indeed)."

Perhaps he was saying that the cancer RATE has doubled as the POPULATION has doubled?!?!?!?!

Thank you, once again, for your comment, in which you make some entirely reasonable arguments.

I accept that there are certain moral norms which have to be largely accepted in order for mankind to live in any sort of civilised state. I also accept that science and religion deal with the physical and the metaphysical, respectively.

My argument is that religion has tried (and the matter under discussion is a case in point) to impose metaphysical dogma on purely physical matters, trespassing, in effect, on the realm of science. In this case, surely the argument about whether heliocentrism or geocentrism is correct is a scientific one; there is no moral agenda. However the Church tried, and succeeded for some time, in infecting what should have been a purely scientific debate with religious dogma, poisoning the argument by punishing those who held scientific views which contradicted Scripture, as if Scripture had any scientific, as opposed to ethical, standing.

General knowledge? Do you mean knowledge as understood by the general public or by internet bloggers? If the latter, is there a site that sets out exactly the level of troll
loathing and, indeed, exactly what constitutes trolling? I mean, some examples of what some might feel is worthy of loathing might, by others, be considered as a deserving shot across the bows or a light-hearted put-down.
It all seems to me to be rather like rating beauty- in this case, all in the mind of the reader and, of course, subject to the sensitivities of the reader involved.

"The difference between science and religion is that, in the latter dogma trumps observation, while in the former, the opposite is true."

This is a strange statement. Clearly, by using the definite article you mean to suggest this is the primary difference between religion and science. However, that is quite dubious. Religion certainly makes use of dogma. Indeed, dogma is absolutely necessary in life. As Russell Kirk liked to point out, we live by dogma. Without settled and authoritative certainties - like murder is wrong - which we largely just accept, and do not constantly reassess, we couldn't live our individual lives or have any harmony or stability as a society. If we did not have dogma and assumptions we would be constantly trying to shore up the foundations of our knowledge and never learn anything new or useful. Natural science has its dogmas (which are often left to philosophy to support). But anyway, the central distinguishing features of religion and natural science are not just their approach to dogma. That they deal with different spheres of reality seems more important. Natural science deals with external, empirical phenomena, especially their quantitatively measurable and testable side, whereas religion deals with - first and foremost - the metaphysical. Besides, religion includes a large normative concern with moral and spiritual behaviour, which is not paralleled by anything in natural science. This is why religion is more dogmatic than science, and legitimately so.

The reason the Cardinal objected to heliocentrism was that it contradicted scripture. In a letter to one Father Paolo Foscarini, he wrote that interpreting heliocentrism as physically real would be "a very dangerous thing, likely to irritate not only all scholastic philosophers and theologians, but also to harm the Holy Faith by rendering Holy Scripture as false".

That is why the Cardinal "preferred the traditional interpretation", as you put it. Dogma was preferred to scientific evidence.

Morphing is most annoying - I've been popping out for a few days here and there over the last few weeks and it makes picking up the threads even more tricky when contributors play silly b's with their names. I vaguely recall the re-entry of John of Dorset recently, leaving me wondering if our young traveller had returned to the old country.

John

How do you know what most internet forums and websites do or don't do? Is it a case of intense study or guesswork?

NB This is not a case of baiting - I'm seriously intrigued as to how a young man can 'know' so much.

As some of those involved in the Galileo case include Cardinal Bellarmine, who can hardly be seriously accused of lacking in thought or intellect, I find it rather strange to say that his opponents were unthinking. Indeed, in this area he hardly failed to think about the issues. He recognised that if one accepted the assumptions or axioms Galileo was putting forward then it might be possible to demonstrate the sun was at the centre of the solar system (or heavens), but he objected to the idea that these axioms could be demonstrated to be the undoubted truth. It was because of such doubts he preferred the traditional interpretation.

Indeed, in the Scholastic method you were always meant to present your opponents arguments and objections in their strongest possible form, so as not you had the best chance of actually refuting them and not some weaker version. It is glorious to see we have now moved on from such barbaric times.

Alan Thomas,

I hope the fact that Paul P is again trying to stop people splitting their infinitives, a practice that has been grammatically accepted for well over a century, has not escaped your anti-pretentious radar. I have always found it curious that you claim to be so opposed to pretention, yet you say nothing about Paul P's posts, which are second to none on this blog for their pretentions.

I have now seen your correction of your earlier post regarding Cardinal Bellarmine. Firstly, any conversation between Galileo and Bellarmine occurred under the pontificate of Paul V. Therefore, I hope (though, given your obstinacy doubt) that you will concede that there was no error on the part of Paul P or myself in referring to this pontiff in relation to this affair.

There is great doubt as to whether Galileo made any promise not to promote heliocentrism, but let us suppose that he did. As I have explained to you, he was not charged, as you have alleged, with breaking any such promise, but with "holding as true, the false doctrine, taught by some, that the sun is the centre of the world". Do you concede this, Mr Colm? If not, let me know the precise charge which you say was brought against him.

Now to your latest post. My question was not "bizarre". You suggest that Galileo should have given equal weight to a theory which he had seen to be wrong. Are you suggesting that he should have betrayed his principles to do so? There seems no alternative, if he were to have done as you suggest. Galileo was a scientist, giving evidence on research, not a judge, so your judicial analogy is meaningless.

Now, for some reason, you say that there are still geocentrists around. There are also flat earthers. So what?

As for your comments on science and truth, well science is based on observation and experimentation Any conclusions have to be verified. Look up the etymology of "verify" and you will see its relation to truth.This is what Galileo, and Copernicus before him, had done The difference between science and religion is that, in the latter dogma trumps observation, while in the former, the opposite is true. Hence, the Church's longstanding opposition to heliocentrism and Galileo's support for it.

Now, I do hope that you will at least attempt to answer the questions I have asked in my posts to you of 30/07, 31/07, 01/08 and today.

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